Fans had one solution in mind for the Rockies’ problems. And rest assured, it wasn’t to create a two-headed monster. The Rockies shook up their front office Wednesday, except, like a snow globe, all the pieces fell back into a similar place.

Dan O’Dowd remains the team’s general manager, but he’s going to focus more on the minor leagues and player development. Bill Geivett remains the assistant GM, and is now responsible for the major-league club on a daily basis, specifically the management of the pitching staff.

Rockies owner Dick Monfort defended the moves, saying he has the proper people in charge but that they weren’t in the right place. So, rather than fire O’Dowd or Geivett, or both, Monfort redefined their roles.

O’Dowd has a résumé as a skilled farm director. He carved a reputation for developing young talent with the Indians and later with the Rockies, beginning with Todd and the Toddlers. Since the death of club president Keli McGregor, O’Dowd, in my opinion, has been spread too thin. He absorbed some presidential duties while also trying to serve as a traditional GM.

Geivett, meanwhile, has done a little bit of everything the past 10 years. He will now be solely accountable for one task, improving the big-league club. He will concentrate on pitching, analyzing everything from pitch selection to innings and days of rest. His easy-going personality is more suited to being around the players and coaches.

O’Dowd is much like a football executive, his temper leaving him constantly fighting the desire to have a knee-jerk reaction to the team’s struggles. In the end, the pair are flip-flopping a chunk of their responsibilities. In that case, why not just make major changes?

There’s one spot appreciable gains can be realized — with O’Dowd bringing in some new minor-league coaches, and hiring a savvy man for the soon-to-be-created director of pitching operations. My recommendation for that spot: Mark Wiley. The former big-league pitching coach would be a terrific hire.

O’Dowd told me that he knows critics wanted him fired. And I have heard multiple colleagues of O’Dowd suggest that given the man hours he’s devoted since 1999, he could benefit from walking away. Instead, he’s going to monitor what’s going on at home while trying to improve the minor leagues.

Monfort had no intention of canning O’Dowd. So O’Dowd proposed the realignment of the front office.

Thinking outside the batter’s box is admirable. The Rockies, playing at altitude, need to look at doing things a different way. But unless this change leads to a major overhaul in personnel, this switch just seems convoluted, like placing a maze in a room that previously featured an entrance and exit.

Monfort’s loyalty is tied to this experiment.

From the four-man rotation to co-pitching coaches to a new front-office title, the Rockies have been scrambling for answers this season. It all ties back to pitching and Coors Field playing closer to its prehumidor days this year.

There was no data over the past four years to indicate that Blake Street would be a pinball machine again. However, starting in May, the inflated numbers at Coors Field have shaped every front-office decision, and the new plans have walked a fine line between reasonable and excuse-making.

It’s not just on the field, though. The Rockies’ starting pitchers, by any measure, have been awful. Opponents have had issues too, indicating the field’s impact. Still, if the Rockies had it do over again, they would have never entered the season with a staff so young and so brittle.

The Rockies’ maneuvers are tied to finding consistent success at altitude. As I have written before, they’ve never had a starter throw 200 innings in three consecutive seasons. No pitcher over 32 has reached 200 innings. And every effective starter, other than the since-traded Ubaldo Jimenez, whose performance has decreased since the second half of 2010, has suffered major injuries (Jeff Francis, Aaron Cook, Jason Jennings, et al).

Pitching at altitude is different. It’s harder to keep pitchers healthy and effective. And yet this season seems to obscure previous success from 2007 through early September 2010.

The 2008 season was a bust, but even then the Rockies still hung around until late August. The 2007 and 2009 seasons featured playoff berths, and the 2010 team contended for a postseason berth for 148 games and then collapsed.

What if the weather and Coors Field’s subsequent behavior is an aberration? It’s possible, given how the data exists as an outlier.

Ultimately, it’s Monfort’s team. These are his decisions. But regardless of who is doing what and what their title is, the only way this team is going to get better is by drafting and developing better starting pitching.

Troy joined The Denver Post in 2002 as the Rockies' beat writer and became a Broncos beat writer in 2014 before assuming the lead role before the 2015 season. He is a past president of the local chapter of Baseball Writers Association of America and has won more than 20 local and national writing awards since graduating from the University of Colorado journalism school with honors in 1993.

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